From an interview with Vladimir Nabokov conducted by Alberto Ongaro in 1966 for L’Europeo, included in Think, Write, Speak: Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews, and Letters to the Editor, a book of Nabokov’s work, which will be published this month by Knopf.

alberto ongaro: Love has changed, according to sociologists, novels, and films: casual sex, infidelity, no sense of sexual jealousy. Sex has been emptied of feelings.

vladimir nabokov: I agree with you that literature and cinema deal with the problem of sex more frequently than they once did. In fact, you could…